Defeat to Pakistan shows why Australia are still awful in Asia

Having failed to heed the many lessons from their first Test loss in Dubai, Australia on Monday sank to an even greater defeat to a disciplined, talented and well organised Pakistan side in the second Test at Abu Dhabi. In the lead-up it felt a shame that only two Tests were scheduled but Darren Lehman’s side will be glad to skip town now.

Their 2-0 series loss cements, if it was even necessary, the impression that Australia have not only failed to master Asian match and pitch conditions but continued to regress on the continent in line with the form shown on their disastrous Indian tour of 2013. If they received a full body wax here, the nastier hairs – the inability to counter even half-decent spin bowling and reverse swing, nor generate a sufficient supply of their own – will be out of sight when the crammed Australian summer schedule clicks into gear in a week’s time. Regrowth is a killer though, as anyone who watched Glenn Maxwell open the batting in India and pose as a No3 here could attest.

Again they attempted to dictate terms and failed miserably. Despressingly enough Australia were even outslogged in Abu Dhabi with the often stodgy and staid Misbah ul-Haq easing into turbo-mode and plundering a 56-ball century to level Viv Richards’ 28-year-old Test record. That innings aside, Pakistan’s batting efforts were monotonously disciplined but still oozing character and charm. Generally Australia oozed traits far less becoming.

Crease occupation, as natural as respiration for Pakistan, often appeared well beyond the tourists. For all his majestic form of the past 12 months, David Warner is yet to survive 200 deliveries in a Test innings (174 is his current best), let alone the 349 that Younis Khan absorbed in his towering double-century of the first innings. Warner has lasted 100 deliveries in 14 of his 60 Test innings to date. That rate needs improving but he’s not on his own.

On the final day both Steve Smith and Mitchell Marsh showed their team-mates up badly in a determined if futile stand, weathering more deliveries between them than Australia’s top four did across both innings.

Maybe it’s not all bad though. Australia have developed a knack for picking such comically unsuitable squads for tours as this that the shambolic results are not only expected, but the tragi-comic pratfalls that ensue almost make the results hard to place in context with anything else they do. We know that Australia will beat up on all but the very best once they’re back on home soil. Away they’ll always give South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies a hard time but India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka away? Forget about it.

It’s always easy to say in hindsight but with the all-rounder-heavy squad they sent, as in India a year earlier, this series might have been lost before a ball was bowled. Still, the upcoming Australian summer schedule won’t give too much pause for introspection. Wins lurk around the corner, as do the returns of Ryan Harris and Shane Watson. The sudden appeals of the latter speak volumes of his replacements.

Not too far away on the horizon, England know all of this, which is why they’ll again produce the exact type of wickets that in the mid-2013 Ashes series afforded them a 3-0 series win against a side who’d turn around and promptly embarrass them down under.

What was Australia’s plan for this Pakistan series, if any? The initiation of Mitchell Marsh seemed central and was at least a success on the batting front, but if there was a unified theory on how best to tackle Pakistan’s spinners it was hard to tell in the way Australia either winged it or bricked it. Some charged forward like overzealous fencers, others shuffled back with far less certainty. Both approaches ensured a regular flow of wickets. Nobody’s idea of a steady hand in the lead-up to the trip, Marsh actually put a few more credentialed Aussie batsmen in the shade.

Batting partnerships were a key to this Pakistan series win and also said much about the gulf in suitability of the two sides to these conditions. Player of the series Younis’ composure bred confidence in whoever stood at the other end with him. In contrast and with the shine barely knocked off a 602-run second-innings deficit, David Warner’s absurd switch-hit goaded Glenn Maxwell into a shambolic companion piece that barely missed his exposed leg stump. He was gone moments later anyway. Monkey see, monkey do.

In the form he’s in heading toward the Australian Test summer, Warner knows he can take a Test or more away from India within a session. This series though required something different. Younis proved he could to it for three (or four or five) sessions. Even when Warner was in command you had the feeling it wouldn’t last long.

Lehmann, Clarke and their men will cop the chiding they’re due and move on knowing this series will soon be forgotten, but Rod Marsh and his selection panel might have pause to reassess their strategies for future trips like this. Australian cricket often toys with the concept of ‘horses for courses’ touring squads, but will it ever truly pick one?

This series prompts another uncomfortable question: how best do the various academies, finishing schools, pathways and centres of excellence best prepare young batsmen for encounters such as the two Tests of this trip? Last week former national selector Jamie Cox mooted the introduction of Indian-style pitches using imported soil, but their utility would be questionable if Australia doesn’t also produce the types of slow bowlers capable of giving batsmen that genuine subcontinental experience. Forget pitches, Cricket Australia would be better off importing net bowlers and in wholesale quantities.

As was the case on that 2013 Indian trip, Maxwell was the cipher for everything wrong with the Australian performance; brassy, aggressive and self-confident but so utterly lacking in guile and an appropriate plan of attack that Younis, fielding at slip, was at one stage brought to laughter before the ball had even taken the stumps of the manically charging Victorian.

Maxwell has a series of children’s books coming out this summer. So, improbably enough, does his brother in switch-hits Warner. The suggested age for those books rather unfortunately matched the wisdom seen in much of Australia’s batting throughout this series.

At the start of this Test Maxwell wore a luscious beard and huge fluorescent sunglasses that conjured the aesthetic of both mid-80s and mid-90s Australian cricket. Taking a similarly long-range view, both the selectors and practitioners of this current Australian Test squad might pause now to consider exactly what it is that they’re trying to achieve.